Sometimes, when the cares of the world weigh down on us as a nation, it's nice to take a little breather from the alarming present and ease our troubled minds by wandering back into the past. You know, get out the old history books and just do a little escapist reading. Now, I'm not talking about the important facts of US History as our schools teach it; we all know that stuff about Indian Genocide, the KKK, the McCarthy Years, how we're all responsible for slavery and JFK being shot, the stolen election of 2000, the growth of that vile monopoly capitalism that's killing the planet-- our malignant nation's "Tragic Past" as one presidential candidate calls it. No, I want to get away from all that and lose myself in a far distant past, one with nothing to do with our frightening present. Oh sure, people used to think that many of our traditions and most of our laws originated in the Roman Empire until we discovered that the US Constitution is really based on a mixture of Iroquois Law and the Ujamaa traditions of the African Slaves which were ripped off by the fiendish 'Founding Fathers' and credited to the Romans by the White Chauvinist Pigs who conspired to create a capitalist hell on Earth right here in our tragic nation.
Around the same time as those Founding Fathers there lived in England a historian named Edward Gibbon. He was considered, until the publication of Barak Obama's first book, the finest prose writer in the English language. Sometimes, just to take my mind off my troubles, I'll leaf through 'Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire' and muse over some random quotes.
Let's do it together, shall we?
Those were troubled times, the old Fifth Century. Here's how Gibbon describes the scene (all Gibbon quotes will be in Italics):

...every species of corruption polluted the course of public and private life; and that the feeble restraints of order and decency were insufficient to resist the progress of that degenerate spirit which sacrifices, without a blush, the consideration of duty and interest to the base indulgence of sloth and appetite.

Just imagine living in a place like that! There's more:

...and the mad prodigality which prevails in the confusion of a shipwreck or a siege may serve to explain the progress of luxury amidst the misfortunes and terrors of a sinking nation.

Phew, what a bunch of morons! But the regular people were pretty down to earth it seems:

A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the insubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.

One warmonger actually tried to get the Romans to abandon paying off their enemies and to encourage the people to defend themselves against the rising menace:

He exhorts the Emperor to revive the courage of his subjects by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury from the court and from the camp; to substitute in place of the barbarian mercenaries an army of men interested in the defense of their laws and of their property; to force, in such a moment of public danger, the mechanic from his shop and the philosopher from his school; to rouse the indolent citizen from his dream of pleasure; and to arm, for the protection of agriculture, the hands of the laborious husbandman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll bet this loser wants me to miss my favorite TV shows, too! At least we have that dunce W to blame our problems on. I guess the ancients did too:

...and the people imputed to the mischievous policy of the minister the public misfortunes, which were the natural consequence of their own degeneracy.

Well, we can see how out-to-lunch this Gibbon dude really is. But it gets worse. You see they didn't understand 'soft diplomacy' or cultural sensitivity in Gibbon's day so his chauvinistic mind allowed him to make the following statement:

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the Council Of Ravenna he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.

Geeesh! Picky, picky, picky! Why can't we just Give Peace A Chance? but no, Gibbon continues with the insults:

They disdained either to negotiate a treaty or to assemble an army; and with a rash confidence, derived only from their ignorance of the extreme danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war.

But, in the end, the Romans sat down at the table for a respectful round of negotiations that only can be achieved by good-hearted people getting together to resolve their problems in a civilized manner:

...the Romans were resolved to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric refused them a fair and honorable capitulation, he might sound his trumpets and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised in arms and animated by despair. "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed," was the concise reply of the barbarian; and this rustic metaphor was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury...

But, what the heck. Dale Carnegie once said that 'No' is the first step toward 'Yes'. They just should have explained everything to him more clearly. I think that 'rustic metaphor' shows that they weren't dealing with a guy with any higher education or knowledge of the Rules Of Diplomacy. But Gibbon lets us off the hook a little:

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to deprecate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

So don't sweat it, baby! Its just these Evil Times. And if a tiny ally is overrun by a swarm of bloodthirsty barbarians just relax. These are local problems as Gibbon so correctly notes:

The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy.

So chill out, relax. Catch the Olympics on TV or go down to the health club and get a massage. You deserve it! All this worrying that the people who, by their superior merit, have managed to obtain positions of leadership are blindly leading us to destruction is just idle paranoia. After all, Rome's still there, isn't it?

The Russians have invaded Georgia! Aunt Pittypat has refugeed to Macon and Rhett and Scarlett are loading Miss Melly into the buckboard as a wave of clanking T-34s lead lines of screaming infantry forward across the landscape. The scream of Stalin Organs and the earthquake-rumble of massed artillery echoes through the peach orchards. Have they gotten to Atlanta or Savannah yet? Well, no, they've gotten as far as Abkhazia and South Ossetia...wait a second, I can't find those places in my 'Georgia' triple A travel guide. What? Oh, that Georgia! Who cares about that Georgia? What's it got to do with me?
The answer is PLENTY! Why are the retread KGB agents running Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin engaged in a piece of bloody and vicious aggression against it's tiny neighbor?
It's not like they want a few million more angry Muslims to plant bombs in apartment buildings and movie theaters. Georgia isn't exactly a juicy plum holding out the prospect of rich loot and economic advantage so what's the deal?
The oil price has dropped. For dictators like Putin, Ahmadinejad, and Chavez that's really bad news. They can't compete with the advanced economies when it comes to producing heavy machinery or computer systems, they can't compete with and are even dependent on food grown by the three agri-business giants (The US, Canada, and Australia), they can't compete with Asia and especially China when it comes to consumer goods production and exporting; their moribund economies rise and fall in the price of one commodity, OIL! In the last couple of weeks the price of that commodity has fallen precipitously from $148 a barrel to around $116, with speculators still selling short and analysts talking about $60-80 being the support level.
Do you expect thugs like Putin to sit around and just let that happen while the economies of their countries sag like one of Obama's underinflated tires? Not in this universe. All of a sudden Russian airplanes are bombing civilians and Russian tanks are pouring across the border in an area which is crossed by a pipeline that carries 1% of the total world production of oil. Russian planes bombed the pipeline but 'missed'. In the age of JDAMs its impossible to imagine a relatively modern air force attacking an undefended target that they had plenty of time to assess and missing it completely. This isn't the Zimbabwean Air Force here. The Russians have had plenty of practice bombing apartment buildings in Chechnya to get any problems with their aiming technology worked out.
It's obvious what's going on. This is a blatant attempt to raise oil prices. It will work, too; just like the provocative actions by the Iranians in the Gulf raised the spot market price every time it started to slide. The Iranians are a bit inhibited because they don't want to provoke the cowardly democracies into pressing for a strike against their nuclear facilities so its the Russkies' turn. And when it gets right down to it, what do they have to lose? Nobody's going to do anything. Europe gets most of it's natural gas from Russia. Russia provides millions of barrels of oil to the world market every day. Their production has sagged since they expropriated the privately owned and foreign companies but they are still a major player.
The Demo-Obama solution, of course, is diplomacy. They think that talking to this bloodthirsty dictator, who has a veto in the UN, is going to make him betray the economic and political interests of his country. 'Persuasion is the tactic of the weak, but the weak are rarely persuasive,' said Gibbon in the ultimate refutation of the Power diplomacy of the degenerate socialists.
What would constitute strength in this case. Beyond a bit of sword-rattling it might be instructive to these dictators to know that the United States had just gone into high gear looking for oil and building nuclear power plants. A superpower that was exploiting it's vast energy sources would be a threat to the high prices these creeps have become hooked on and would have leverage in any negotiations that took place. With Putin and the boys threatening Georgia and the Ukraine the result of not stopping them now will create a monster that will certainly threaten the weak, degenerate, unarmed bunnies in the aging states of Europe. Our inability to act will compromise all sources of oil from the Eastern hemisphere; another pressing reason to start drilling NOW!
I've been hanging out at these supposedly right-wing blog sites where the policies of the Democrats are regularly castigated as unAmerican and serving to weaken our country. In many ways the people who are saying those things are right. But it's now becoming increasingly clear that every day, every hour, every minute we delay trying to become as petroleum-independent as we can threatens our national existence. The anti-drilling policies of the Democratic party have now become a threat to that continued existence. These tiny incidents are just a harbinger of the final showdown, the day the oil stops flowing. If we haven't done anything to stop this trainwreck from happening in the next few years we are going to be overwhelmed by a disaster unprecedented in our history.

We've become used to metaphors where Marxist leaders are linked to pathfinding professions. Stalin was the Great Navigator, Mao the Great Helmsman, Castro The Maximum Leader and now we have Obama The Pilot Of Change! But it seems that the sputtering political bi-plane that Obama is in control of has hit a bit of turbulence. McLame has hit him hard, drawing a picture of an out-of-touch elitist who embraces a no-growth whacko agenda in league with a pack of Anti-American ideologues and his responses have played into that image. So the Candidate Of Hope is struggling with the controls as the Republicans scream for drilling and nuclear power and are starting to turn the agenda of the election around to their advantage. This would be a tough situation for any Pilot and as our Intrepid Hero grasps the stick tightly beads of sweat start to drip down his face, stinging his eyes.
But that's not his only problem, by far! He's got Snakes On The Plane! Snakes named Clinton, the most venomous kind. The female thinks she should be flying the plane and is stirring up her lesser snake buddies to go in the front seat and start to entwine themselves around the legs of the embattled pilot as he struggles to keep control of the plane. Hillary operatives, will-less zombies who never make a peep without a word from headquarters, are now loudly and publically demanding a floor vote at the convention. Those thirty point shellackings that Snake Woman gave our Intrepid Pilot after he supposedly clinched the nomination are being remembered as it becomes obvious that the same people that voted for the loathsome Hillary out of dismay over the leftism and anti-white racism of the Obama team have not warmed to him in the meantime and are almost certain to go with Paris Hilton's 'Wrinkly Old White Dude'-- McLame.
Meanwhile, on an African babe-sampling tour, the lovely and reptilian BJ gave an impromptu interview to some ABC info-babe that was dripping with barely-concealed venom towards Obama and The Big O's tactic of branding BJ and The Little Woman as closet racists. He very pointedly equivocated when asked if Obama was qualified to be President. One time in the 1960 campaign when reporters asked Dwight Eisenhower why Nixon should be president he responded, "Give me a week to think about it."
What Clinton did was worse than that gaffe because it was an intentional slight aimed directly at Obama, intending to do him damage. The most amazing thing about the whole encounter was the seething anger that was just under the surface of BJ's terse delivery. He couldn't bring himself to say anything positive about Obama. He gave a generic endorsement of Democrats in general but nothing specific about their standard-bearer.
So with his poll numbers tanking, the Clintons and their minions stirring trouble at the convention and McLame landing video punches that are having an effect the high-flying Obama campaign is struggling to stay on an even keel and move forward. But to where? What's his goal? Where is the theme of his campaign? The old Hope and Change baloney has burned itself completely out; it was a hit on the 'old' candidate Hillary-Snake anyway. So what does he have to offer, tire gauges? Higher taxes? That's inspiring.
Meanwhile the flight over at McLame Airlines was lost in the clouds but finally the sputtering, confused, liberal old duffer has straightened the plane out and started on a steady course touting an end to drilling restrictions and an end of the de facto ban on building nuclear power plants, an issue with traction that has been pumping up his poll numbers and those of the Republican Senatorial and Congressional candidates when all of a sudden the cry was heard, "Snakes On The Plane!" Five alleged 'Republican' Senators, lead by that drooling moronic idiot Lindsey Grahamnesty are working with five Democrats to develop a 'bi-partisan energy plan' that gives the anti-drilling Democrats a de facto drilling ban to replace the de jure one and then gives $85 billion taxpayer dollars to fund more 'alternative energy' boondoggles. When are these jerks going to stop stabbing the Republican Party in the back in the name of bi-partisanship? Just more Snakes On The Plane!
So now it's become like a disaster movie. Two planes are in the air, both filled with out-of-control packs of reptilian troublemakers, both in the hands of pilots who are less than qualified to be in the pilot's seat. The atmosphere is alive with invisible downdrafts and wind shear that adds an element of unpredictability to the flight. An Israeli attack on Iran's nukes could change the dynamics of the election in one day, for instance. A fractious and riotous Dem convention or one where the Obamanoids were stupid enough to give Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or any of the other of the myriad of black psychotic politicians prime-time facetime (and they are that stupid. They think that those guys make sense!) could bring the plane crashing into the mountain. The slimy, sabatoging Clintons will not benefit from the resulting crash, even though they would bring it on in the hopes of running against a Republican Newbie in 2012 as the feeble McLame retires. They are finished as a political force in this country. But that won't stop them from trying to grab as much power and get as much revenge on all the people they see as having betrayed them as they can. They are making themselves completely hated in the Democratic Party, even a total wipeout of the Obamanoids will not put them in a better light or make them emerge as an alternative power-center in the party.
The only hope that the Snake-Infested Dems have is the phenominal stupidity of Reptile Republicans like Graham and Co. who are working with fiendish diligence to destroy what is left of the Republican Party. It's exciting! As the planes wander aimlessly in the fog, altering course with no rhyme or reason we ground-bound spectators can only hold our breath and hope for the best.

The Obamanator has stepped in it again. More amazing is that nobody in the media or the Democratic Party can see it. He's sure no Bill Clinton. Making the argument that having fully inflated tires is the same as drilling for oil is completely idiotic. We import 10 million barrels of foreign oil a day, if we cut that to 9.5 million we still have the same problem. We have to pursue every option. Anyone with any sense can see that. Nuclear, drilling, ethanol and the other alternative sources. Our economy can't expand if our energy supply is shrinking. Our economy can't expand if our currency loses it's value. The mask is now slipping as it becomes more and more clear how committed the Democrats are to contracting the economy.
"I'm saving the Planet!" Announced our horrible nightmare of a Speaker Of The House when a reporter dared to ask her about her stubborn refusal to schedule a vote on a bill to lift the drilling ban. Now we have the stark mental image of Barak waving a tire pressure gauge in our faces. The message is as clear as if it was his stiffened middle finger! Get out of your car and onto the bus you Plebeians, WE'RE saving the planet!
Now with the Republicans openly protesting Pelosi's arrogance and Obama getting ridicule heaped on him by talk radio even a party that appeared defunct even a month ago is showing signs of life. This election isn't going to be about Ted Stevens or John Murtha or Iraq or Medical Care or any of those issues; its going to be about energy, and in a larger sense it will be about whether we are going to take actions, in the name of Global Warming, that will severely hamper our economy. The Dems are on the wrongest of wrong sides of that issue. It worked for them when it was just something people saw on some corporate commercial about our Beautiful Green Future but now that it's come down to spiraling prices and real hardship the very group whose votes the Dems have counted on as theirs, the working class, are becoming alarmed and worried about the nation's and their own futures. All of a sudden the policy of forbidding drilling and putting a de facto moratorium on nuclear plants is seen in a different light. It also should be noted that the environmental groups give heavily to Democratic candidates and generally give nothing to the Republicans. A Democratic defeat at the hands of anti-enviro Republicans would be a disaster for those groups. Every sacred project they've worked on for the last thirty years could be overturned in a rush to grant leases, issue pipeline permits, and get to work on nuke power plants. This wouldn't be the placid atmosphere of the Bushie Years, there is panic in the air. The stampede will bring the fences down in a rush.
Can the Dems still win? It's possible but not likely. They have a complete dearth of leaders. The only one who can speak in public is Obama and he's been off his feed lately and is out of his depth on the energy issue. Handing the Republicans the Tire Guage image shows what a complete muppet he is. A nice clear visual image that an eighty-IQ retard can grasp perfectly clearly--WE"RE NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT HIGH RISING ENERGY PRICES!!! There isn't anyone who can put the Democratic message across because they can't put their message across; shrinking the economy and putting the government in effective control of it isn't something you really want to shout too loud about in times like these. The Republicans now have a clear, positive issue that people understand and genuinely agree with them on. Paris Hilton's 'Wrinkly Old White Guy' is starting to play to huge, enthusiastic crowds. States like Michigan are ripe for the taking. Even states like Pennsylvania. Ohio is not going to jump on the Depression Train with Mr. Tire-Gauge and the Red Army Chorus in Congress. If the Dems are going to pull this out they're going to have to come up with a reason why you don't want gas for your car. It's as easy as putting air in a tire, isn't it boys?

Bush Lies Again! How much more of this are we expected to take while that warmonger runs amok all over the planet smothering the dreams of the hungry masses yearning for social justice?
In Columbia we are seeing the signs that the armed bullying tactics of the BushLied clique are forcing another indigenous resistance group to fold up it's tents and retreat. This is sickening. Can't these bloodthirsty imperialists ever get the message that their military bluster is not the answer to the world's problems? One look at the diplomatic successes that have ended the war in Darfur and brought peace and justice to its people, the negotiations that have brought electoral fairness to Zimbabwe, the UN's successful mission to bring food aid to the typhoon victims in Burma should show the futility of military efforts and the power of unleashed diplomacy!
Now, added to the bragging about the so-called 'victory' over 'terrorism' in Iraq we have to contend with more insults to cultural diversity as these retrograde fascists gloat at the destruction of the FARC resistance group.
In March of this year a force of elite Columbian troops, trained and equipped by the US, crossed the Ecuadorian border and raided a FARC training camp. One of the leaders of the FARC was killed and several computers were grabbed containing, apparently, loads of damaging information about the group. In the months since then the FARC has suffered defeat after defeat.
In the days after the raid Hugo Chavez made a bunch of noise about the sanctity of international borders. Here's how Reuters, a left-wing news service extremely sympathetic to Chavez put it:

Colombia’s police chief said documents were found in the raid in Ecuador showing that Chavez gave the FARC $300 million. Venezuela denied the charge and said it had its own evidence that the police chief was a drug-trafficker.

Colombia also linked the slain commander, Raul Reyes, with an official close to Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa.

“The government of Ecuador energetically rejects these accusations which cynically add to the hostile attitude shown in the recent violation of our sovereignty,” Ecuador’s government said. [Reuters]

Chavez rushed tanks to the border and made threatening noises but backed down extremely quickly when confronted with the Columbian military; well-trained with years of operational experience. Chavez can't say either of those things about his military. He also must have some doubts about his conservative officers and how loyal to the regime they might prove. Military defeats have brought down dictators in South America before and Chavez had little to gain and much to lose by pressing the issue. Even just with the limited noise he made his climbdown was a humiliation. As the economic scene in his country grows ever more grim and the crime wave unleashed by the gangs of thugs aligned with the ruling party effects more and more people his popularity continues to erode.
Which brings us to the real point of this post. Here we have an anti-US terrorist group that has been funding it's violent activities by selling cocaine in the US market decisively defeated. A bombastic enemy of our country, who denounced us before the UN and compared our President with Satan has suffered a humiliation and a loss of prestige. The forces of Democracy have struck a winning blow! Read All About It!
Except you didn't. The US media prefer Chavez to Bush. The Democrats are openly hostile to Columbia's ruling party. Nancy Pelosi recently spiked a free-trade deal with the Uribe government. This war, another war won against terrorists by the persistent Bush, is viewed as a defeat for the forces of good by these 'citizens of the world'. The media has only one story line and they're not going to report news that doesnt fit that storyline. Even when the Columbians, using information captured in the Ecuador raid, rescued a bunch of long-held hostages the coverage was long on hugs and kisses with the family and short on background or analysis about the crumbling fortunes of the FARC or the success of Bush's policy in Columbia. One of the hostages, a French woman effusively thanked all the left-wing groups who had begged and sent petitions to Chavez, the UN and the thugs at FARC imploring them to release her and had scant praise for the Columbian military who rescued her and of course didn't mention that they had been trained and equipped by the US under Bush. They should have left her in the jungle with her ideological soul brothers. Her fellow citizens of the planet on the left are none too happy about these developments and it shows how much the media is controlled by the left that this entire story has been effectively spiked or buried.

I wondered when it would come up, and here it is, raising it's ugly head again. Reparations to the victims of 'America's sad past' are what the Dem nominee has endorsed at some convention of minority journalists.

"There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for," Obama told hundreds of attendees of UNITY '08, a convention of four minority journalism associations.

http://starbulletin.com/2008/07/28/news/story05.html

"I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."

Maybe we should build a gigantic welfare state, institute minority hiring quotas and quotas to govern the numbers of minorities in universities, have judges running school systems in the name of fairness and dismantle the capitalist economic system so we can redistribute income. Whats that? You say we've done all those things? Isn't that part of our 'tragic past'?
If we are stupid enough to install this paragon in the White House we're going to have a tragic future!
Reparations? Let's see...Obama's half white and the other half wasn't from a family which was ever in slavery so he should pay. On the other hand Michelle is pure slave-descended which makes her a 100% beneficiary but the kids, I guess they just break even so the Obama family is pretty much a wash. We're going to need some pretty intensive calculations to make this work. The Reinhardt Heydrich Institute for Racial Classification has created a sliding scale of historical victimization. Points are given for participation by your group in oppression as victims and taken away by participation as oppressors multiplied by the number of years the oppression took place and the intensity of the oppression. Instead of determining the exact amount of complicity-victimhood by expensive and cumbersome genetic tests the amount to be paid out can be determined by a simple test which measures the shape and circumference of your skull. Groundbreaking work on this science, a field of study every bit as conclusive as the work done proving the effects of carbon emissions of Global Temperatures, was started in 1933 but unfortunately lost its funding in 1945 due to political discrimination. The scientists involved in this research were able to put into place 'Operation Reinhardt' to implement some of the important ethnic science lessons learned but again, changes in the political climate forced cancellation.
But we can do better! YES WE CAN! Obama mentions the Hawaiian natives bill that that crackpot Daniel Akaka has been pushing for the last thirty years. This bill would create a special class of people in one of our states and give them rights which trump those of 'non-natives'.
The question is...why is this guy considered a serious candidate for president? Do people have any idea what they're voting for? He is on board for every foaming-at-the-mouth crazy radical notion that has been raised in the fever-swamp of academia for the last forty years. Any one of these loony ideas will cost trillions to implement at a time when we are already on the precipice of bankruptcy, a subject which Obama seems to know little about. How can the press not be reporting this on the front page? Has our nation reached the sad state where the voters are so blind to their own interests that they will put a group of people led by this guy into power? Well, they've already handed the Senate and the House over to people equally stupid.
Yesterday Nancy Pelosi explained that no one was going to drill for oil in her nice clean country and that she was 'saving the planet'. Its nice to have leaders with such modest aims, ones which take our individual needs and problems into account. But she wins in her district by landslide margins. The members of the House vote to keep her Speaker. This is what America wants.
This is how the good times end...

Every time there's a ballot measure here in Cali limiting the power of government or restricting state spending up for a vote there appear out of nowhere thousands of TV ads featuring actors claiming to be firemen, teachers and nurses expressing their OUTRAGE! that the SPECIAL INTERESTS want to hurt California's firevictims/patients/children by proposing this immoral attack on human decency! It turns out that these helpless victims of inhumanity have enough money to saturate the most expensive media markets in the country for months. A wall can't get painted on HGTV without a tearful nurse interrupting to plead, beg, beseech the voters to stop the ravening Special Interests from throwing terminal cancer patients out onto the streets untreated. An episode of 'Modern Marvels' can't play on the History Channel without a manly but oh-so-upset fireman imploring us to make sure that when the orphanage burns down someone will be there to save the helpless little tykes from being parboiled by the flaming insulation. Teachers invade the local news painting a picture of classrooms more densely packed than a Javanese opium den filled with mouth-breathing illiterates thirsting for knowledge.
Where are these guys getting the hundreds of millions that they use to saturate the airwaves with heart-rending sob-stories pushing every liberal cause imaginable? Huey Long had a tradition, when he was governor of Louisiana in the 1930s, called the 'deduct box'. If you were a state employee you had to pony up a part of your salary to a slush fund that Huey and the boys used for whatever nefarious purposes they decided were in the best interests of the people of Louisiana. The Public Employee Unions have their own version of the Deduct Box. You have to be in a union to work at most State jobs and that means you have to pay dues. Because most of the loyal union members just look on the impost as yet another of the endless bites from their checks and have never been to a union meeting or taken any part in any union activity this money is just a slush fund in the hands of the 'activists' who abandoned their hated careers in the stultifying bureaucracy and wormed their way into the arcane depths of the union's inner circles.
These people are without exception leftists of various degrees of fervor. It cant be said that they haven't looked out for their charges, either. They've made it almost impossible to fire any public employee who has not been convicted of a violent felony. They've gotten pay scales that have completely outstripped anything in the private sector for the same work; not to mention that you can be disciplined or even fired in the private sector for bad performance or malfeasance or your company can cut back or even go out of business. They've gone on the air or hired effective lobbyists to hector the members of the legislature to give ever larger budget increases to the metastasizing offices filled with state employees busily doing God Knows What. They fight every budget cut, or , since budgets never seem to actually get cut, they oppose the cuts in the rate of increase that are occasionally suggested by hopeless reactionaries. They push for higher and higher taxes on 'those who can most afford it'. They always support The Democratic Party. Public employee unions like SEIU and The National Education Assn. are mainstays of the Party, both in contributions and volunteers. They sit at the table and expect to be listened to.
Where they have done their best work is in the realm of pensions. Most state employees can retire in their fifties to a pension that would make anyone in the private sector green with envy. This pension is indexed for inflation and in ten years or so, even in a low inflation environment, will equal the take-home pay that the person earned while they were working. The pensions are paid by CALPERS (CALifornia Public Employee Retirement System) which is the largest single investment entity in the world, controlling hundreds of billions of dollars. So far, so good!
But what happens to CALPERS in a high inflation environment? Much of CALPERS' investments are in bonds, which don't adjust for inflation. Inflation makes investments in the stock market much less profitable. The high-tax anti-business environment coming soon at the hands of the Dems and their union allies will make keeping these pension promises impossible. All paper investments are only a reflection of the health of the general economy and that health is declining rapidly. States like California and New York can only staunch the flood of red ink with massive cuts in state spending. The example of Michigan has shown that further increases in tax rates will lead to lower revenues. The power of the unions prevents any real cuts. The system is headed for a crack-up and the special interests who run it are committed to things staying the same as they have always been. They are the ultimate reactionaries. The unions and the receivers of transfer payments, represented by socialist vulture groups like the AARP, have enough muscle to fight any reform or cut proposed by politicians looking a few years down the road or even staring into the maw of state bankruptcy this year. With a new government which appears to be certain to be completely dominated by Democrats on the federal, state and local levels the hope for any change or reform of anything is zero. It will be full speed ahead to an Argentinian meltdown of the economy and the currency. In a poverty-stricken, sterile society these people who 'had it made' will be broke and betrayed. They will deserve it.

In the 1920's John Maynard Keynes, Britain's Chancellor Of The Exchequer and the economist who wrote the instruction book for government tinkering and intervention in the economy, asked the flippant question, "Do you want your economy governed by a bunch of lazy fairies?"referring to the laissez faire Free Market economics of pre WW1 Europe.
After nearly a century of Keysianism (or worse) by the Big Government geniuses in which they have proven that they can screw up anything that they touch like a kind of negative magic we want those lazy fairies back! The British Empire controlled two fifths of the world's surface. Hitler couldn't defeat it in a six-year conflict. But it was brought to its knees after the war by the British electorate who threw the reactionary Churchill and the lazy fairies surrounding him out of office and installed a government so inconceivably stupid that eight years later Britain was deep in poverty and still had wartime rationing while Germany, completely destroyed by Allied bombing and the battles which took place in the ruins at the end of the war was undergoing an 'economic miracle' brought on by the lazy fairy economics imposed by her American conquerors.
In America in the 1920's two of the most egregious lazy fairies (Harding and Coolidge) cut Wilson's overpadded Federal Government, slashed taxes and then proceeded to take a long nap while the economy exploded, hemlines rose almost as fast as the stock market and bathtub gin flowed like water. HL Mencken described Calvin Coolidge as 'old laughing boy' and accused him of turning the White House into a dormitory. But even Coolidge had a Chairman Of the Federal Reserve, Benjamin Strong, who was committed to supporting the boom with aggressive monetary expansion. In Coolidge's cabinet, frothing at the lack of government meddling and general sleepiness all around him sat Herbert Hoover; engineer, humanitarian, meddler extrordinaire! A sardonic Coolidge dubbed him with the title of 'Wonder Boy'.
"That man's been suggesting ideas to me for six years, all of them bad!" remarked the taciturn Coolidge in one of his longer sentences. But the canny Coolidge could see a train-wreck coming just around the bend as the speculation in securities ran amok (a problem with lazy fairies, they dont prevent people from being really stupid sometimes). People were buying on margin- 10% down and the balance after you cashed out. Nice if every thing goes up. In 1928 there were plenty of signs that this was going to come a cropper but Strong stepped in with a huge expansion of the money supply to deliver a 'coup of whisky' to the out-of-breath stock market.
And that's the biggest danger of Keynesianism; it works for a while, the larger and larger waves of freshly printed money make it seem like the problems are manageable, until one day the point of diminishing returns is reached and the meltdown occurs.
Which brings us to now. The 'stimulation package' which tossed $200 billion or so off the back of the Federal train for us peasants to spend was dwarfed by the rise in gasoline prices and the decline of house prices. The falling real estate market, retreating from stupid lending policies designed to admit 'minorities' and 'the poor' to the joys of home ownership without bothering with formalities like credit ratings invited a crowd of speculators into a market that 'couldn't go down'. Now additional hundreds of billions are being funneled into the banks to try to stave off the ruin brought on by all those now-worthless loans. Jerks like McLame are calling for Federal regulation of executive salaries to punish all those stupid bank executives for their stupid lending policies, as though creating a precedent like that wouldn't lead in a short time to Federal regulation of ALL salaries in the name of 'fairness'. As the feds move in to bail out the banks and stave off panic they bring along a truckload of new regulations, all as stupid as the ones which caused the crash in the first place. The social fascists in Congress keep proposing price controls on pharmaceuticals, nationalizing health care, Global Warming caps and taxes on carbon emissions and draconian tax increases which will chase every penny of investment offshore in a giant bug-out which will flatten the economy like a tire with a spike in it. The Lazy Fairies must be pulling down fat salaries on some government 'Human Rights Commission' somewhere so they can scheme on more creative ways to legalize getting married to each other and have lost all interest in economics. Apparently even less interested in economics is the front-runner in the presidential foot-race, a guy named Barry, who has yet to utter one single syllable regarding the economy that makes sense. When asked why he wants to sharply and progressively raise taxes in these precarious times he replied that it might be bad for the economy and even decrease revenues but that it was surely 'the right thing to do'. Fairness you see. Lazy fairies aren't fair. Neither is the inevitable result of the policies endorsed by the vast majority of our political and business leaders as they attempt to protect their cushy positions from any rivals; national bankruptcy. We're seeing the beginnings now. Huge cuts are in the works in state governments; the bluer the state the bigger the cuts. New York, California and Michigan are visibly sliding toward the edge. The rest of the country is close behind.
Bring back the fairies!

Berlin's been the scene of memorable oratory by many of the world's finest speakers. JFK proudly announced that he was a doughnut in this fair city; and undoubtedly sampled a few tasty German tarts of his own before jetting off into the sunset. Ronald Reagan bellowed, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" to the throaty applause of hundreds of thousands of Germans who were undoubtedly sick of the noisome graffiti smeared on the unsightly concrete by the hippies who were leaching off the fat dole checks handed out by the Bundestate and yearning for a rebirth of the kitschy pastoral scenes that were so popular before the world was plunged into fire and destruction in two world wars and a nuclear showdown. Then there was that guy with the mustache. I forget his name. He had big plans to redecorate the city. One of his projects was the Victory Monument that Obama gave his speech at celebrating victories that never quite came off, a warning about the limits of oratory. Little else survives of this mesmerizing speechmaker's legacy; his redecorating scheme came to an abrupt halt right at the end of the demolition phase of the project. But it left Berliners (the people, not the doughnuts. There was a proposal to rename the city Krispen Kremenstad but anti-capitalist radicals rioted in the streets and put a stop to the notion) with a hankering for tub-thumping oratory.
It seemed they were going to get their wish yesterday. The giant noise of the Obama campaign was coming to town. True, his previous attempts at Gravitas in the Middle East had fallen a bit flat and the Hossanah chorus in the media had come across as overdone and phony but this was it. The Babe was going to go to the plate and whack the ball out of the park! He had a more than friendly crowd; atheists who so reviled and hated Bush that they nightly found themselves on their knees beseeching God to free the world from this eight-year Bushy plague. He was the political equivalent of Michael Jackson; a superstar, black but not too black, with a show that would make the hairs on your arms stand up straight! Women have been known to faint during his speeches. The air crackled with excitement. All the commentators, sensing that something had gone wrong with the Overseas Triumph up to now, were sure that this would be the Defining Moment, the Cover Shot, the oft-used film clip, the international version of 'I Have A Dream!'
But it wasn't. On any level. The crowd was big but far smaller than the million-sized monster predicted by the Adoring Press. The speech was a rambling pastiche of shop-worn cliches with no pacing or timing, no FEELING. It dragged on dully for forty-five minutes or so. The lukewarm applause that was there in the beginning faded and all but died out by the end. The Mighty Babe had struck out!
Obama himself knew it. His heart was never into foreign affairs. His only real stated foreign policy goal was the pathetic hope that 'they'll like us again' after the horrible Bush years. So he tried to connect with that. We're all citizens of the world, Blah, Blah, Blah...forgetting that the Germans are already citizens of a vast multi-national conglomerate of nations and are growing increasingly sick of being tied to a gaggle of struggling economies and of being pushed around by faceless international bureaucrats. So he read through his speech in a cadence that would have made blinding rhetorictitians like Gerald Ford proud and as soon as he uttered his last word the networks cut away. FLOP!
The reason none of this is working politically for Obama is simple, he's not addressing what people are concerned about. The falling value of their house, the rising price of energy, the insecurity of their jobs, state and local governments going bankrupt, banks teetering on the edge of failure; every day people are looking at bleaker and bleaker future prospects and they're terrified. Even a dimwit like McLame has a better feel for what's going on than the lordly Obama and his media entourage. They're essentially even in the polls. None of this foreign stuff has helped Obama one single bit. Possibly it's hurt him to be at the center of such an obviously phony campaign gimmick while real people are looking for something that will give them confidence that they will weather this storm intact.
Will Obama's tin ear and the surprising lack of bite in his speeches since he clinched the nomination continue? Has the world finally noticed that he has nothing to say? His gaffe-prone performance off-script is shockingly inept and his handlers are much less skilled than the Clinton's ones were at shielding their charge from reporters who have done a little fact-checking and have noticed his many discrepancies as he veers to the center. Can this lightweight, flawed candidate go the distance?
Time will tell.

The Obamessiah is doing his victory lap around the world and the media lapdogs are fawning and crawling on their well-stuffed bellies in the throes of political ecstasy! What a genius Our Barry turns out to be! Robert Mugabe, another overrated egotistical politician of African heritage, gets tougher press in Zimbabwe than Obama gets in this country.
Ah yes! An example of a member of our esteemed unbiased press corps trying to braid his nose-hairs with the ones in Obama's butt is David Broder, who in today's Washington Compost writes a paean of hagiographic love to his beloved candidate's miraculous walk across the political waters overseas.
A year ago Obama voted with seven other left-wing critters to cut all funding from Afghanistan and withdraw all the troops, in keeping with his Nutroots terrorist sympathies. On this triumphant trip he says that he has always been for a ten thousand troop increase in our forces there. Magnificent!
If Obama had had his way Saddam or Uday Hussien would still be in power in Iraq. The mass graves would still be filling with corpses, the torture chambers (the REAL ones) at Abu Ghraib would still be going full tilt and the luxury hotels would be filled with leftist congressmen and crackpot Hollywood types running to kiss the hem of Hussien's garment. So what better for Obama's foreign policy credentials than to go to Iraq and claim credit for the victory he opposed with every breath for the last year? What statesmanship!
After opposing the Senate resolution labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization (the same group who are supplying our enemies in Iraq weapons to kill our troops) Obama makes the statement that 'my Banking Committee' passed a sanctions bill against Iran. "Judge me by my actions!" declared Obama in a statement that caused the hearts of his media lapdogs to flutter. Only one problem with that...The Man Of Hope, The Paragon Of The New Politics, The Change Agent isn't on the Banking Committee. Of course trivia like that doesnt bother hacks like Broder who in the presence of The Obamessiah regularly foam at the mouth, talk in tongues and write columns like the one linked below.
This foreign trip has been a revelation about The Obamessiah. It shows that he will say anything, no matter how far it strays from the truth, to get elected. It shows the amazing ego that he has. Some of his most egregious misstatements were preceded by the admonition, "if you had bothered to check the facts..." when the most cursory fact-check (something beyond the grasp of alleged 'news' organizations like ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Slimes, The Washington Compost, etc.) shows that this clown is a Clinton-level prevaricator. That is to say he tries to be as dishonest as Clinton and in the same way-- the current lie is spoken with aplomb and outraged assurance that negates all previous contradictory statements-- but one does have to ask if he's talented enough of a liar to get away with it until November.
Another thing that this trip has shown is how bad this clown is when he's off script. When he's lying he's channeling Bill Clinton, when he's stumbling and fumbling and screwing up questions he's channeling Dan Quayle. When one of his Disciples, oh excuse me, when a member of the Esteemed UnBiased Press Corps lobs a softball at Barry he more often than not flubs it. His ignorance is vast and, unlike the Lovable BJ Clinton, he doesn't know how to not answer a question. Maybe his campaign team should sit him down and show him movies of Dwight Eisenhower, who gave incoherent answers on purpose to confuse people and prevent follow ups; "here Barry, try doing THAT!"
Well today is Barry's speech at the Victory Memorial in Berlin. What Victory was that BTW?
The krauts were badly whipped in both world wars, maybe this is a monument to the Franco-Prussian War. They're expecting a million people. Yes, the disarmed Euros want a collapsing socialist America to withdraw its shrinking military (the likely scenario under an Obama Administration) and leave them to 'engage in meaningful negotiations' with the hungry jackals who surround their aging and shrinking populations. But I'll bet the swoon from the press, US and European, will rise to a crescendo like the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; a true 'Ode To Barry'!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/obama_lucky_and_good.html

I went to the theater yesterday and saw 'The Dark Knight'. I'm kind of a film snob and I dont like action-adventure movies very much but this one was great! It was dark, sardonic and fast-paced. the script was intelligent and delivered twists and surprises at every turn. The acting, directing and editing all were superb. The special effects were so good that it really did seem as though you were really seeing something that was there when it wasn't. This isn't to say that the film was realistic; there were many things that you just had to accept as part of the comic-book story so you could just sit back and enjoy the show. Even with that said, the mood of the film was hung with gloom and negativity; the good guys were almost destroyed by their hollow victory.
Later on in the evening I turned on the News. I'm a politics snob as well as a film snob so when the glowing TV box showed me the latest episode in 'The Obamaman' franchise, 'Barry Goes Abroad', I viewed it with the same skepticism that I used with 'Dark Knight' a few hours earlier. The two were similar in so many ways. There was a flawlessly delivered script on the part of our star, the heroic backdrops and the adoring fans were presented with exquisite timing. The entire media seems to have dropped their drawers for this guy like a pack of teenage groupies confronted with their favorite rock star.
But like the other fantasy flick there's a whole lot you have to ignore for this farce to work for you. You have to ignore how wrong Barry and the Dem Gang were all along on Iraq and the War On Terror. The media hype has airbrushed this gigantic Dem faux pas out of any 'analysis' of the current situation but the fact remains for anyone with a memory that goes back more than a month or two; it wasn't Bush who lied for years about the War In Iraq, it was the Democrats and with main star Barry singing the lead in the chorus for the last six months.
Now he's surveying the defeat of the terrorists him and his pals so avidly supported and claiming credit! Luckily for the Dems their fellow anti-Bush liberals in the Taliban have launched an offensive against the NATO forces in Afghanistan, giving Barry the chance to say, "See, if they had only listened to me!" The media sages cluck, yes, an offensive by the Taliban means the dastardly Bush has been defeated. Democrats look on any military activity by the enemy as a defeat for our side, or should I say, for the US side which they oppose. Just as Whiner Chronkite was reduced to sniveling tears of surrender by the Tet Offensive, a suicide charge by the commies which ended in a decisive US victory, the libs have been moaning and complaining that our enemies still exist while they refuse to report US victories, exaggerate or even invent US 'atrocities' and cry over and over again "Where's Osama Bin Laden?" when they know damned well he's across the border in Waziristan in territory belonging to our allies in Pakistan whom we cant risk undermining by violating their border because with a hostile government in Pakistan we would lose overflight access to Afghanistan entirely. But Barry solemnly pronounced that he would raise the number of US troops, forgetting that this is a NATO mission and that the cowardly and stingy Euros are already reneging on their commitments.
Today he flies to Jordan, surrounded by his barmicide gaggle of hosanna-singing liberal media clowns. Will he equal his equally liberal predecessor Jimmy The Jerk and give a full-on, toe curling , tongue-slobbering kiss to the head of Hamas or will he just subtly encourage the bloodthirsty savages who lurk on the outside of the Israeli security wall that Barry and his leftist friends were so adamantly against to feel that the new US regime will cut those nasty, imperialistic Jews loose and sit by wringing their hands as Holocaust II opens in theaters around the world?
All this Middle East stuff is just the prelude, of course. The real victory lap will be among the Euros. They've been so horrified at the anti-PC lapses of the cowboy Bush-lied regime that they yearn for an accomodationist socialist who will destroy the US economy and back down on the use of any armed force for any reason against the misunderstood Third Worlders who surround the aging and shrinking populations of Europe. They eagerly await this reincarnation of the Roman Emperor Honorius, who as part of his policy of peaceful negotiations with the barbarians withdrew all the warmongering Roman legions from Britain, leaving them with a stirring statement of the continuing Roman commitment to British security. The Euros will dance in the streets for the hombre who will free them from militarism and use diplomacy instead of force, just like Honorius. The fact that Britain was soon overrun with barbarians and Rome was sacked by the Visigoths doesn't discredit the tactic of negotiating with the violent, it just enjoins one to be a little more cautious and courteous.
So yes, it will take a slew of media special effects to make this incompetent and surprisingly ignorant leftist seem like a candidate with a solid grasp of foreign affairs and a coherent world view that will allow him to soberly assess America's national interests but if we all just suspend our judgment about this and his equally ruinous domestic policies we can learn to imagine the wonderful new future of change which unstoppably lies before us. Yes We Can!
But like 'The Dark Knight' this happy parade also has the dark and gloomy potential to destroy our way of life with its empty and hollow victory, which looks more and more certain, and usher in a different 'Dark Night' that wont need any special effects, hosanna-singing or media hype; it will be all too real.

The debate on "Global Warming' continues on two levels. On the first level, the scientific level, the trend is pretty clear; there is NO evidence that man-made carbon emissions affect the Global Climate, which is currently cooling. NONE of the assertions made in 'An Inconvenient Truth' can be supported by scientific data. The entire panoply of statements about Global Warming announced as Gospel by the leftists ten years ago have been disproven. Here's an article written by the scientist "who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

This article talks very specifically about how data collected in a systematic, scientific manner failed to find any evidence that Man-made Global Warming has any validity at all.
The article states:

"If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory."

But I'm watching 'Fox News Sunday' as I write this. Every commercial by companies like Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil looks like they hired a band of Marxist eco-hippies to run their advertising campaign. They're SO GREEN! SO CONCERNED! The Planet is about to shrivel up like a raisin but...DONT PANIC! Big Business and Big Government are going to be working along with Big Media to save the world from the excesses of us gluttonous consumers. It's amazing to compare the scientific argument to the political argument in which the voices of the anti-Greens are almost inaudible. When Barbara Boxer proposed a three-trillion dollar Global Warming tax increase that would have completely sunk the economy within three years there was no national outcry. Babs will win reelection in California in a landslide. If she bothers to run any campaign ads against whatever sacrificial candidate that the Other Global Warming Party runs against her she'll use her attempt to murder our economic system as proof that she is the only Green choice. No matter which of the socialist Weather-Fixing political parties wins the election this November the trend towards government domination of the economy and the absorbing of the giant moribund mega-corporations into planned monopolies who no longer have to fear demanding stockholders or upstart competitors will continue.
Why is this lie taking over the consciousness of our society without any opposition? How have the people who are fanatically eager to impose the failed policy of government economic planning been able to use this climatic fraud to finally turn the foremost Capitalist nation on Earth into a centrally planned 'privately owned government corporation' that will bring the same results that we got from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac? Why are the politicians and even the business titans who dominate our economy so completely ignorant as to the real facts, or if they know them then silent as this travesty plays out? There are voices of opposition in the scientific community against this charlatanism, where is the political and cultural opposition?
Is this it? Do we just hand over our freedom and our prosperity to a claque of rich, arrogant elitists who are using this flumery to dispossess us of our political and economic rights and gain total control of everything? If they can destroy the economy to fix the weather doesn't that imply that they think that they are Gods? You might laugh at that but that's how Utopians think. Solzhenitsyn wrote a book entitled 'We Never Make Mistakes' which talked about that mentality among the Stalinist antescendants of our current crop of geniuses. The Stalinists embraced Lysenko's phony science with the same enthusiasm as The Gorians feel for their self-serving brand of hogwash. If the new 'revealed theory' mandates a reduction in the population of us pollution-causing economic units wont a Green Himmler emerge to set up the industrial capacity to reduce the number of these Pestiferous Plebeians? Being able to Fix The Weather gives you the capacity to make these sorts of God-like decisions and to use a cold-blooded brand of situational ethics to justify the 'necessary steps'.
This is a result of our political system becoming a one-party state, a development that started in the 1960s and came to it's ultimate fruition under the feeble corporatist 'leadership' of George W Bush. Maybe Marx was right; trends in a society are a result of underlying forces beyond the conscious control of mere individuals-- you know, like the weather.

It was dim and dark this morning. The marine layer had moved onshore during the evening. In Southern California when you wake up and there's a thin layer of clouds between you and the sun you know its going to be a beautiful summer day. Sure, it'll burn off by eleven, just in time to catch me doing the Saturday yard work, but it wont get to that fiery furnace desert heat that makes you go inside, close all the windows and turn on the AC. A beach day! A day to drive up to Angeles Crest or the Santa Monica Mountains and go on a hike. Time to get out the hedge trimmer, the edger, the blower and the lawnmower and try to keep the constantly encroaching plant-life at bay. After that's done you can sit in the garden at the glass picnic table in the shade of the trees and read a nice book while the cats each grab a soft spot and have an afternoon siesta.
But hey! This is an angry blog. I started it so that I could vent my socially unacceptable middle aged angst without offending anyone. My tiny audience has expectations! Shouldn't I be denouncing someone? Well, now that you mention it, what would be more typical for me than to rail against the liberal media? But this time, instead of deriding them for liberal bias or writing scathing lines about how they've replaced most of the actual news with 'fluff' news I'm going to question the expensive technology race that cropped up between the three local network affiliates; the race for Doppler Radar supremacy. When they first started with this Doppler nonsense I tried to figure out whether they all were getting their data from the same Doppler or if they were engaged in some multi-million dollar spending race generated by tiny ups and downs in the ratings.
"Oh my GOD! Channel 4's kicking our butts--it has to be the radar!"
"If we dont get better radar than them our ratings will be lower than the news on...Channel Nine!"
"Get that radar upgraded and do it NOW!"
But they're too cheap to actually spend money. The race was in the graphics departments; who could come up with the most compelling name for the radar that they all shared with The National Weather Service. MegaDoppler 7000 on Channel Seven seemed to have won the war. Does Channel Four escalate to AstroDoppler 40000? Channel Two the would need to raise to OmniDoppler 200000; it could end up like an Argentine inflation report with zeros proliferating into the trillions.
But all this loud, breathless promotion of their hi-tech prowess has one flaw. This is Southern California. Between the middle of April and the beginning of October there usually arent any clouds within a thousand miles except for the stupid marine layer. Even in the rainy season we only get four or five downpours which you can see coming for a week on the satellite photos; They start off Alaska and roll clockwise down until they collide with the West Coast. The Chumash Indians a thousand years ago probably had as accurate idea of what the weather was going to be as we do now. But still the TV stations tease the weather in the beginning of the show ("I'll have the weather for your morning commute coming up later in the broadcast!")
as though we were living in Minnesota or Florida or some other place that has weather all year round that you have to take into account when you're planning your day.
And where do they get those weather dudes? I guess they're supposed to look tan and healthy so they spray on this orange man-tan and then truss them up in ill-fitting suits so they look like the corpse at an open-casket funeral. And the JOY they exude when they tell you that its not going to rain tomorrow as though it just MIGHT rain in July--it did in 1993, it could happen again.
Its better news for them when there are giant brushfires. They have to share that one with the rest of the news crew but they get to say whether the humidity will drop or if the marine layer will move in. Brushfires keep the weather guys relevant in the summer, they probably send their interns out to light them if they don't start spontaneously.
Well, I've got to trim a tree, mow the lawn and leaf-blower the patio. Enjoy your Saturday; if where you are you can look up and see a puffy white cloud tell it I said Hi!

Free market economists trembled this morning as the Los Angeles Times, one of AmeriKKKa's leading underground newspapers made the startling announcement that free markets have failed the American people and that they were looking for alternatives!

(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-losingfaith16-
2008jul16,0,1516735.story)

"Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society."

Gee, Peter Gosseln, the writer of the article left out one of the most egregious failing industries in our nation today--dead tree newspapers. The free market has certainly settled their hash for them. There are massive staff cuts at The Times. Whole sections are being cut and a third of the writing and editorial staff is being let go. There are similar massacres occurring at almost every 'dead tree' newspaper as circulations drop and advertisers migrate to the internet and cable TV. The newspapers and the similarly failing 'major' network newscasts look on in dismay as New Media conservative types like Rush Limbaugh land nine-figure contracts.
But with that obvious bias against the free market aside, look at the above excerpt. Everything that the writer talks about is a direct result of excessive government intervention in free markets. Two massive 'government chartered' corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, greatly loosened the criteria for qualifying for a mortgage a few years ago to give 'the poor and disadvantaged' (AKA minorities and people with bad credit) the opportunity to 'share the American dream'. This empowered a cloud of noisome real estate 'flippers', fly-by-night developers, and oily loan sharks to descend on the benighted poor and encourage them to sign on the dotted line and enter real estate nirvana. Meanwhile the Middle Class went on an orgy of home purchases or massive expansions of their old houses based on equity created by trillions of dollars of phony government-backed paper surging into the financial markets through the two bogus government 'independent guarantors'. But like all speculative surges this one reached a point where it became unsustainable and now the ebb-tide is pulling formerly strong financial institutions into the vortex along with the overinflated retirement dreams of the 401k worshipers who are sitting on the balconies of their 3,000 square foot McMansions cursing that damned free market for going down as well as up. The government is stepping in with trillions of dollars in further 'guarantees'; of course with a truckload of new rules and regulations attached. We're seeing the beginning of what might be the effective nationalization of the financial sector. Some free market.
Another bone in the throat of the Muddle Class is the steep rise in energy prices. They sold their 1,200 square foot houses near the city and moved twenty or thirty miles away to a 3,000 square foot McMansion in the satellite suburbs where the schools hadn't been totally destroyed by federal intervention, radical 'educational reform' zealots and rampaging minorities using their victim status to evade any discipline. Taxes were lower and you could jump in the air-conditioned Navigator, get breakfast at the drive-thru window and gab on the cell phone as you cruised slowly in the gridlock stream to your job downtown. Of course you voted for the local Democrat who could be counted on to rein in those filthy polluting oil companies and prevent them from annoying any endangered species with their horrible drilling rigs, pipelines and refineries. These Tribunes Of The People also could be counted on to keep any nuclear power plants from being built within a thousand miles of your house and to demand the closing of coal-fired electrical generators. In foreign policy 'No Blood For Oil' became the watchword. But 'No Blood For Oil' means...no oil. Not expanding production while demand rises all over the world can only lead to one result. We're seeing it now. The LA Times article makes the absurd claim that energy demand has only risen 1% but doesnt give a time-frame for that figure or site a source. Another vague number tossed out by liberals to make their point; $140 a barrel oil has probably suppressed any recent growth in demand but long term overall demand is way up and the trend hasnt stopped. Cringing weak policies in the Gulf have allowed the Iranians to create periodic scares which threaten to close the Straits Of Hormuz and keep the markets in a constant state of price-inflating panic. Yet even now the Democrats resist allowing drilling off the continental shelf and in ANWR. When President Bush lifted the executive order against new drilling (its about time this weak-kneed liberal took some kind of action) the price of a barrel of oil dipped $9 in one day...until it became clear that the Pelosi-Reid leftist enviro-zealots had no intention of following that executive action with legislative action. The Democrats are directly responsible for energy prices because of their environmental fanaticism that blocks any serious energy development at any cost to the stupid electorate who are convinced that these are the Bush policies.
The leftists will do the same to Health Care; introduce some unworkable 'free market reforms' to make everything 'fair' and then when the whole structure collapses under the weight of the unworkable new rules they'll go for nationalization to 'fix' the free market.
This country was made great and wealthy by the Free Market. There has been more freedom of opportunity for anyone willing to exert themselves then there ever has been ever in human history. We are now actively abandoning the underlying premises that created that greatness; this election should confirm in power a radical socialist party and place a totally incompetent dilettante who has spent his life being steeped in radical anti-market theories into power in the White House. The result will be a hyper-inflation that will equal that of any third-world thugocracy, which is what we will become.